Tuesday, November 29, 2011

**JUST TO CLARIFY, this isn't my own pattern or idea. I saw something like it on Pinterest maybe ... anyway, just not claiming it.

A quilt for my brother's birthday! He's 25.

I was just terrified of sandwiching and quilting this beast, but it wasn't a big deal. I think this helped:

It's my first bed-sized quilt. I didn't get a final measurement, but it covered the top of our full-size mattress with a little drape.

Anyway ... the brother loved it! I gave it to him on his visit out here at Thanksgiving, and he used it when he crashed on our couch. Twice. We do holidays right in our family.

The specs:

Fabric is a mix of Kona solids (Orange, Jade, Earth and Daffodil) and Essex Linen (PFD and Sand).

The batting is Warm and Natural.

I used straight-line quilting, with rows an inch apart. I marked the lines with a Clover water-soluble marker, and about had a heart attack when the whole soluble thing wasn't solublizing. But it came out after a go in the washer sans soap and a tumble in the dryer sans heat.

We had fun photographing this one.

And most importantly, the brother loved it.

:: ::

On other fronts, I built a lightbox.

Specifically to take photos of the dinos.

This one was mostly a just-to-see-how-it-works effort; now I want one big enough to accommodate sewing projects.

I made some super wonky stars.

Onesies.

Tag blankie. It's from Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing for Baby. I made it to test sewing with minky, except I cheated and sandwiched some batting in there too (for sturdiness). Finding fabric ribbon was hard! My JoAnn didn't have any. I went to Target, but all their gift-wrapping ribbon wasn't fabric. But the ribbon adorning their gift bags was, so I bought a few and appropriated the ribbon. Not too bad of a situation, because gift bags (the rad plain brown paper ones) always come in handy.

Soft baby blankie. The front is a great flannel. The back is super-soft minky. I've never really sewed with either before and was nervous. The flannel was fun. The minky made me swear a lot. It's slippery, even with a walking foot. But it makes an awesome baby blanket. I sort of wish I'd used a piece of quilt batting in the middle to give this thing some weight, but I don't the the layers would have stuck together.

I don't think it needs frosting. But I added it here because I made this cake for work, but ate the whole top off when it came out of the oven and needed to hide that.

Chowder did a bit better at the dog park last Sunday.

And, finally, Echo came!

I went up to the sewing room at 10 a.m. to start work on the quilt I'm dreading. And I forced myself to clean up in there. When I was almost done, our mail carrier knocked on the door to drop off this wonderful package! What a reward for being all responsible and adult-ish and stuff.